Read 58 times since Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Diet is the most important aspect of your weight loss plan. It is not enough to achieve calorie deficit (more energy expended than consumed). You have to be aware of how different foods affect your body and this is one of the areas I spend a lot of time as a personal trainer in Glasgow. A lot is made of the fact that carbohydrates only contain 4 calories per gram, as does protein, but fats contain 9 calories per gram. As a result fat is often singled out as the main villain you fight when you diet but fat loss is not as simple as calories in to calories out. The way your body responds to food and drink is arguable more important.
Carbohydrates are absorbed into the body in the form of blood sugar, so lots of carbs (particularly sweet or starchy ones) means a rapid increase in blood sugar that you don't get with fat of protein. To maintain normal blood sugar levels the body releases insulin which quickly promotes the storage of blood sugar as fat and inhibits the use of stored fat as fuel.
This means blood sugar that should be circulating to be used as energy is locked away in storage. This means that despite eating, your body will be short of useable energy so will ask for more food to be used as fuel. Being hungry shortly after eating a rice laden Chinese meal is a classic example of this. Eating more carbohydrates at this point only serves to exacerbate the problem. Everyone has different levels of insulin sensitivity, meaning some people can eat more carbohydrates that others before they trigger the negative insulin response.
Carbohydrates are anything made from flour like bread, pasta, noodles, cakes and biscuits. Rice, potatoes, cereals, fruit and anything with sugar also produce the negative insulin spiral. The higher the glycemic index of the food the faster the blood sugar will rise and more aggressive the insulin response will be. Replace high glycemic index carbohydrates with slow release ones like lentils and vegetables, especially fibrous leafy green ones like spinach, cabbage, broccoli and kale for 2 weeks and see how you do.
Then gradually add fruit into your diet and to see if you can tolerate them without triggering the negative insulin response. If you start putting on fat and feeling hungry all the time you need to avoid them if you want to stay lean. Iain Smith (MPhil/CSCS) owns Standout Gym, an independent warehouse gym in Glasgow, focusing on weight loss. He offers small group training as an affordable alternative to Glasgow personal training. Iain is a former international decathlete with 17 years coaching experience. www.standoutgym.com.
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